Broken Sword 4 startup error message!

[mattylad]

Hey, i bought BS4 today and installed it and installed direct x9 and when i went to play it it came up with an error message "error starting directx" then said something about a clip board, i am not sure what is wrong and i really want to play this game, i have a feeling it may be something to do with my graphics card which when i look it up it says "SIS661FX" if thats any help, please help me a.s.a.p!

[Melanie68]

Welcome. :)

I'm not sure about the error message but this problem has come up before. One person suggested rolling back your video card drivers to an older driver. I think this game is really picky about graphics cards.

Also do your computer specs meet the requirements?

[mattylad]

erm i think they do but heres a copy of the error report if this is any help


************************************************** ************************************************** ***
Application : Broken Sword - The Angel of Death
UserName : Smith
MachineName : SMITHPC
Sent At : 16:05:59 14.02.2007

************************************************** ************************************************** ***
************************************************** ************************************************** ***

EmFileManager Dump:-

************************************************** ************************************************** ***
bs4pc.exe unhandled exception 0xc0000005

Last EmRos Error (PLEASE DO NOT USE FOR DIAGNOSING THE PROBLEM):


Exception Address :0x0056253D

EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION: The thread tried to read from or write to a virtual address for which it does not have the appropriate access.

Registers:
INT:EAX=0x00000000 EBX=0x00000000 ECX=0x0022F85C EDX=0x00000000 ESI=0x00840BE8 EDI=0x007E7018
EBP=0x0022F7D0 ESP=0x0022F7AC EIP=0x0056253D FLAGS=0x00010246
FP: Ctrl=0xFFFF027F Status=0xFFFF4030 Tag=0xFFFFFFFF ErrorOffset=0x4FDF97DC ErrorSelector=0x0022F26C
DataOffset=0x00840560 DataSelector=0xFFFF0023 Cr0NpxState=0x00000000
ST0=0.000000
ST1=0.000000
ST2=0.000000
ST3=0.000000
ST4=0.000000
ST5=1.000000
ST6=0.000000
ST7=0.000000
************************************************** ************************************************** ***

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

Level : 00 ( Actual Exception Location )
Module name : C:\Program Files\THQ\Revolution Software Ltd\Broken Sword The Angel of Death\bs4pc.exe
Built : 10/10/2006 15:20
Address : 0x0056253D

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

Level : 01
Address : 0x00509631

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

Level : 02
Address : 0x0050A410

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

Level : 03
Address : 0x00670B2B

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

Level : 04
Module name : C:\WINDOWS\system32\kernel32.dll
Built : 05/07/2006 10:55
Address : 0x7C816FD7 RegisterWaitForInputIdle

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

Level : 05
Module name : C:\Program Files\THQ\Revolution Software Ltd\Broken Sword The Angel of Death\bs4pc.exe
Built : 10/10/2006 15:20
Address : 0x00928169

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

Level : 06

************************************************** ************************************************** ***

Ended stack trace
************************************************** ************************************************** ***

Session length: 0 hour(s), 0 minute(s) and 3.841 second(s)
************************************************** ************************************************** ***

EmExceptionHandler v1.1 (c)2005 Sumo Digital ATG*********************************************** ************************************************** ******

[mattylad]

erm and how do u downgrade video drivers?

[Melanie68]

Go to your Control Panel --> Click on the System Icon --> Click on the Hardware tab --> Go to Device Manager --> Find your video card (it's under Display Adaptors) --> Double click on the video card name --> Click the Drivers tab and you'll see a button to Roll Back Drivers.

This is in Windows XP (I'm not sure what it's like for other operating systems but it's hopefully close).

If that doesn't work, it's a little beyond my expertise (I don't know how to interpret error reports). You'll probably need to email support of the company that published the game.

[mattylad]

ok well that hasn't worked, thanks anyways, i may need to download something but i'm not sure what, hmmmmm any ideas?

[RLacey]

Which version of DirectX are you running? There have been several releases of 9.0c (stupidly), and you need one of the later ones installed for BS4.

It might make no difference, but try downloading the latest version of DirectX from Microsoft's website.

[mattylad]

erm i am running the one i got with the game, i am still having the same stupid problem, i really want to fix it!

[marsan]

when I got that exact error message, I had to remove the official nvidia drivers I had installed and install the MSI nvidia drivers instead(the ones for my card, instead of using the drivers for my chipset). I've heard many different ways to fix this - all depending on the card and such. But what all of the solutions have in common is to upgrade or downgrade drivers until it worked. Broken Sword 4 is rather picky about drivers, so it often reacts to drivers that all other games have no problems with.

Anyway, if you have downloaded drivers from nvidia.com or ati.com then rather install the drivers from the cd you got with the card or download the latest driver from the homepage of the produser of your card. That was the fix for me at least. Sometimes the driver packs on nvidia.com can be a bit experimental.I have experienced having problems with a driver pack I downloaded. Then I downloaded it again a few weeks later, and then everything worked fine. It had probably been updated in the meantime. I notice that the driver packs especially have problems with older cards, if you got one of those...

[Melanie68]

To add to marsan's advice (thanks for that :)), Google the name of your video card to make sure it actually supports DirectX 9.0 as well as getting all the latest updates to DirectX 9.0 (even if they're not on the version that comes with the game). It may even be a matter, depending on your video card, that you may potentially need to use a slightly older DirectX 9.0 version.

This is one of those problems that will take some trial and error I'm afraid. :frown: Hopefully you can get it worked out.

[Melanie68]

I don't know if you've gotten BS4 to work yet but:

Read the troubleshooting guide over at the Revolution forums to see if your hardware (esp. your video card) may be a culprit:

http://www.revolution.co.uk/_forum.p...euron=5&page=0

Also, I don't know if you've downloaded the patch yet either but that may be worth a try:

http://www.broken-sword.com/
(Go to the downloads tab and all the info for the patch is on there. It might help to uninstall then reinstall the game and then download the patch to see if that helps.)